HDDJ: Turning an old hard disk drive into a rotary input device

Step 2 Solder wires to the spindle motor contacts

Turn the HDD over, with the exposed platters facing down. Some older HDDs will have four wires coming out of the back of the spindle motor, in which case you can skip this step. Most, however, have an orangy-transparent flat-flex cable. In this case, what we are looking for are four exposed contacts at the back of the motor that we can solder some wires to.

Comments

[Rhamkota]

What if my hard drive only has 3 connections to the motor

[vadipp]

Then you should find the "center" one using an Ohmmeter and _not_ use that one. See the right image in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wye-delta.svg

[vadipp]

Hmmm, I just realized that this project relies on all four wires. Sorry, I don't know how to fix it :)

[project dude]

 Solder what kind of cables, standard electrical cables or audio or video cables?

[Data643]

There isn't much of a difference between the two...

[recordmasta001]

22 gauge wire will do fine :)